So any discussion about this game kind of has to have a big label on it about your thoughts on Mangs. I'm not gonna do that except for like two instances that I think are funny and if it's relevant to the game itself. Which it is minimally. I want this to be as unbiased a review as I can give.

So, Andaron Saga is actually pretty good? Frankly I was surprised I enjoyed it much in the first place. I like a lot of the spritework and character designs, and there's full art of all the characters that many hacks could only dream to have. Maps are (by majority, I'll mention a few stinkers) really tightly designed, there's good difficulty and challenge here. It's also pretty ironman friendly, you have a very full list of units by the end of the game if you're resetting with deaths. The story does a sort of FE4 thing where your lord changes partway through the game, and it becomes kind of obvious when you realize the starting lord is a prepromote. As a hack that uses skills patch, it does something I like a lot: through supports, you can gain skills. Supports are gained just by deploying units together, and supporting units can give you an extra skill on one of the unit. Skills are pretty sparsely distributed, usually only one per character to differentiate them, and the only way to get more are special events like those supports. You can also get items and even new weapon types usable on certain units. There's an archer you get in the second chapter named Runa that has a fantastic magic growth but an awful strength growth. If you support her with a certain mage, she gets the ability to use anima magic as an archer. Promote her to sniper, and she has the crit boost from the sniper class with anima magic! It's a cool system! There's also a lot of custom music that I'm pretty sure was custom made for the hack, which I enjoy. On Lunatic mode only, there's a secret objective you can get for every map. If you get them all, you unlock Chapter 32x, which is a fight against the devs. Hate Mangs? Well, you do get to kill him here. I didn't play this map because every map also has a turn limit you must stay under to get it, and I played on Hard mode for my playthrough anyways. Every map also has a random event that can happen on it, usually they're about a 1/25 or 1/50 chance. Most are just something like a random green unit shows up, or you find a special item. One's a whole recruitable character, who makes a Rick and Morty reference and calls you a cunt. Despite being so hidden, he's actually kind of awful in gameplay. I managed to get that character, which segways into my biggest complaint: The whole game is very juvenilely written. Writers were actually paid to write for the game, which confuses me - there's an awful tonal dissonance present in the game. There's a stupid running joke where they keep calling one character's lance small. It's just a dick joke. They will make this joke at the dumbest times, even in the middle of serious scenes. In one scene you can have what is meant to be pitiful and hopeless as you find the corpse of someone you knew and were betrayed, in the next it's a Metal Gear Rising reference. This happens constantly throughout the game.

There's also one of the worst Fire Emblem chapters I've ever played featured in this hack: Chapter 24. From my knowledge, this chapter's quite a controversial one, some love and some hate it. I hate it. It has thracia fog, and you have to find 3 thrones and take them. Your army gets split at the start, but it keeps getting split as the map goes on, as you're exploring a cursed tomb. There are mogalls that all have the skill Devil Reversal that essentially makes any weapon you use on them a devil weapon, chest mimics that are basically necrodragons that pierce defense, and plenty of other random mook monster enemies. It's impossible to control if you backfire on the mogalls, and even if you had a unit with Nihil, the way the map splits your units up means it's not consistent that you'll even be able to hit the mogalls with them. With thracia fog, you can't see the full map of the tomb, so you also can't figure out where to go immediately. Sometimes you just get tracked down and killed no matter what you do! There's also a fun guy named Nemesis that roams the map, and if he catches you, it's likely a reset. Now what if I told you after getting to all 3 thrones, you have to escape? And Nemesis blocks you? You essentially have to bait the AI into going for Ahmed, who is a resummonable skeleton. But you have only 10 turns to escape, as the tomb is collapsing. You basically have to hope the AI goes for Ahmed every time, and it doesn't always do that if it sees it can kill another unit it values more. It's very annoying. Imagine my shock when I learned this was one of the chapters that Mangs made entirely himself. Fitting. There's a few other maps I found to be lacking in quality, but none were as bad as this.

Overall, I really respect this hack on the merits of a hack and that alone. The writing is dull and juvenile, but I enjoy far more maps than I don't like, and frankly, you can see that there's production value in this hack that just can't be in others. Of course there's custom music and art and animations - thousands were spent to make it, unlike most hacks which are a labor of love alone. It's up there in terms of Fire Emblem hacks. Apparently there's to be a small prequel hack in the process of being made and there's sequelbait at the end of the game... I hope some of the mistakes made here are figured out in those. And keep Mangs away from the map design. Actually just keep him away for the most part.

I went into this thinking it'll be a generic "dating vn", but I found out I was completely wrong, the effort put into a game that's literally free is astounding. I've currently completed 3 of the routes Emi, Lily and Rin. Each route has their own strength as they're all written/drawn by completely different people. Each girl have widely different personalities and goals that they wanna achieve the biggest takeaway from this game was despite them all being "disabled" in a way their problems are still that of the everyday person.
If you want a break from le generic dating vns/sims, I highly recommend this to you all.

Personally not a big fan of this one, I think it has some of the best worldbuilding in the series and it really tries to give you the impression you're fighting a war with all the giant maps that look exactly like they are on the continental map. But I still did not enjoy going through it at all, you have to sit on your ass to play through these chapters for way too long, like a lot of segments of the game is just moving your units at a snail's pace because the 5 mov units slow you down like crazy so you're away from a lot of the action for a very long time, if you cut down the maps' gigantism in this game, it would probably be the shortest experience in the serie. The way the inventory was handled in this game wasn't my cup of tea either, I hated having to exchange money between units or having to go through the arena to gain money to put specific items on specific units, I don't understand why they couldn't just let us trade between units.
I will most likely not revisit this one but who knows.

This was by far the most challenging Fire Emblem experience I've had to deal with so far. I started this game on lunatic out of pride and oh boy did this game make me realise how much I suck at strategy games. I did manage to get through nonetheless through countless attempts and many sacrifices on endgame but it was all worth the satisfaction it provided. The intricacies of the combat system in this game and the design of the maps was so refreshing compared to other fire emblem games, there was something new to discover on every chapter of this game. I also really liked the characters, their designs and all the support conversations they had between each other. While all of what I said so far was sweet, the game does have very noticeable flaws. The plot is basically non-existent, there are plotholes all over the place and it makes no sense. And the other beef I have with this game that I can think of right now is the late game. Some of the decisions that were taken to make the maps difficult at the end were just down right vile. Who thought it was ok to have the debuffs of maids and ninjas stack ? As if ninjas weren't hard enough to deal with when they couldn't stack debuffs on you. The debuff stacking isn't the only problem with maids though, why the hell were they allowed to have an infinite amount of staff use ? The whole point of status staves is to make you consider each and every step you make so that you don't fall in a situation where you're too weak to fight the enemy, but instead you have to go for the kill on them asap and hope to survive the hordes of enemies that are around them on enemy phase to not get hexing rod spammed (which should have never existed tbh). All of this kind of forces reckless play on the final map if you don't have specific characters or ones that just aren't good enough to one round/two round enemies. This all leads to having to rely on rescue cheesing through endgame if you don't wanna retry the last map + chapter 27 for god knows how long. Some may compare having to do chapter 27 again to the endgame of fe6 and fe7, but they just aren't the same situation at all. The final bosses of fe6 and fe7 are total pushovers so having to do the earlier part of them again is never a factor. In this game you have to go through the easy chapter 27 again and again then have to do the actual hard part. Both are bad design philosophies imo, if you're gonna design a hard final chapter, make it so we can save before it and that's that.
Well anyway, that's all I have to say about this game, it was quite a unique experience to go through it and I will remember it for a long long time, Idk if I can claim that I will replay it in the future right now because endgame caused a mental trauma for me.

Too much to talk about so I will try to keep it short. I liked this game and it doesn't really have any major flaw, what did bother me is the amount of stuff it takes to do a 100%, I really didn't like having to beat the game all over again just to get specific achievements. You may say that this is a non-factor and these feats only try to add replay value for future playthroughs but it just bothers me when I beat a game and do not try to finish everything it has to offer as a completionist. But yeah, I feel like beating this game again and again will make you start to hate certain aspects of it which are totally harmless, it totally affected my rating here and I won't lie that this game probably doesn't deserve 7/10.
On a side note fuck those hooded flying enemies in tower of fates 2.

Entertaining game that had enough differences in mechanics to differentiate it from FE7. However a lot of these differences are just bad... Like the fact every map objective is seizing the throne or the fact that there are ambush reinforcements which can be very egregious when you're playing slowly. Thrones grant defense and 30+ evasion which means that a lot of your scrubs like roy,sue,shanna,etc can't get some juicy exp because the bosses are just too fat. My last beef is with the unlocking of the last 3 chapters, sealing a very relevant part of the game behind requirements most people won't satisfy is just dumb.

This is the type of game that makes you wish you knew every mechanic right from the start to get an even more satisfying stomping session. As for the story, it was alright I guess, was not that impressed but it did the job. Something that I thought was kind of sad is that the game is just way too short :/
As for the Lunatic difficulty, it is indeed absurdly difficult at the beginning but it just becomes an end turn simulator when your robin starts to have a serious stat advantage over the enemy.

Truly a lovely game. It has well written story with great characters and top of the notch world building, a very charming soundtrack that absolutely pumps you especially during combat. And these combats are the best part of the game, you have so many characters to pick from to optimise your team, and nobody really feels weak compared to the rest of the squa thanks to the bonus experience you can give them. The maps, enemies and side objectives are also very diverse here compared to Sacred Stones so you get to do new stuff each chapter.
Anyway it was cool...

For a first time playing fire emblem, I quite enjoyed this game.
The story was decent, I loved many of the characters and the battles were hype...
Just using Seth to destroy entire armies is a sentiment of satisfaction that can't be measured.
Having replayed it on an ironman setting without any tower grinding, I believe some of the game was designed around you powerleveling your characters to not get overwhelmed by numbers. Nevertheless, the game is easy enough to not be too slow to beat and it was quite an entertaining experience

the references are dated
the humor is fucking embarrassing
the fakemon designs juvenile
the people behind it are questionable
the update releases are glacial
yet its still somehow the best pokemon game ever made

The 5-stars on this one is very genuine. No meme, no joke, no bullshit: I fully believe this game deserves the rating. Not only is it what I now consider to be my favourite Pokemon fangame, but also what I would say is the BEST Pokemon fangame. This game is honestly peak ROM hacking which I didn't expect from what is at the offset, and at it's core, a silly cringe-worthy 4Chan homage. But the word homage rings very true here, because despite mocking Pokemon itself and those who take it too seriously this is an honest love-letter to fans of the series with many a community reference and wonderfully balanced gameplay that provides a tough but fair challenge which reasonably scales along the journey.

But this game has a reputation which I cannot just ignore here, can I? As already mentioned, Pokemon Clover is a homage to 4Chan and was made by numerous anons from the /vp/ board across years of collective work. Starting life as a simple FireRed edit the game has developed over it's nearly 10 year lifecycle to become what it is today; I can't admit to having played any of these older versions of the game but I was aware of it for most of it's developmental lifespan. I never thought a whole lot of it back then as I had mainly come to know it as "the ROM made by a bunch of fans at once" which alone was a cool concept... but I guess I just never looked into it much more than that. A bit of a shame, but better late than never with this one.

Of course the one thing most people will bring up with this game is the 4Chan aspect, which is very well reflected in the game's tone. Both the creature designs and the humour of the game world. To start with the former, I understand that there are absolutely offensive designs here with many of their basis being abnormal, memes, itself offensive, or in-jokes. However, unlike most edgy/"offensive" ROM hacks I feel Clover does something incredibly well with the creature designs; making them work as actual Pokemon. Your typical edgy-era hack would just put in crudely draw genitals and nazi symbols as "creatures" and call it a day, but the Clover devs really ran with the concepts given and made creatures that- although obviously based on things that wouldn't be on the table for the official games -still look like believable Pokemon. I'm dead serious and I WILL die on this hill, because it's a very valid point. Yeah, names like Furnazi kinda spell out the reference for you but divorced from the name/basis it really does look like an official Pokemon; likewise for Finasoven, the thing it evolves into. Lizakbar and Vandash are perhaps too closely on-the-nose to be justifiably real but still work as creature designs despite that, rather than "let's put in an Osama Bin Laden PNG" or "let's draw blackface on an NPC sprite" which would've been the lazier and cheaper route to get shock factor in there. Then you get the unsubtle designs like Rainglock, Barbarkley, Motherfuck/Hofucno... and especially Kuklux/Kuklan. But dare I say these few unsubtle designs being the exception make them work? ...let me explain; the game builds itself up as having Pokemon based on various edgy/offensive/random concepts, only to then chuck out something like Motherfuck or Kuklux at you out of nowhere. The sudden appearance of these very blatant designs is what makes them humorous, offensive or otherwise. There are then Pokemon designs that aren't even offensive at all and are just genuinely cool ideas for creatures with amazing spritework to bring them to life: The Clovermon selection is a brilliant spread of cringy, offensive, straight-up cool, and everything in-between. It's absolutely wonderful and I loved discovering it throughout my playtime.

For the writing/game world, yeah. What the hell else would you expect from a game like this... basically nothing is off-the-table: If you exist, no doubt some part of your existence is going to be made fun of in this game. And here's the thing, here's my spicy hot-take. I don't mind it; I don't think it's as offensive as people make out; I don't think it existing is wrong, either. Yeah there absolutely are very dated and unfunny lines in this game, I cannot and won't deny that. The second city is a 'feminazi' dig after all, something that hasn't been relevant in years. But it's important to consider the timeline of this game's development, as well as how everyone gets made fun of here. I will emphasize again: EVERYONE gets made fun of here. There are lines of text that insult the game itself, for fuck's sake. I am part of one of the marginalized groups that is mocked in this game and yet I didn't take offense to it despite having received legit harassment before (face-to-face, in the real world, not someone sending petty online messages). Not all of it made me laugh, but there were points where it got me either because it was unexpected or because despite the over exaggerations it felt relatable in a sense. And that's something I think is important, being able to laugh at yourself. If this game was all "haha n-word" and saying gay people should die or whatever, yeah it'd absolutely cross the line from funny to plain offensive. This game not only makes fun of literally everyone, not only exaggerates things to an often unreal degree, but lampshades itself constantly. The neo-nazis for example are portrayed as being right because that's how they see themselves, yet are given trainer names that insult them for being obviously in the wrong. The merchants (no prize for guessing what these are reskinned to be) are constantly around tinfoil-hat NPCs who spout total bull pretty much every point in the game. The gym leader who is literally a nazi gets to have a spot of development by showing how his beliefs came from his bad upbringing and how he's considering a change for the obviously better. The overall writing in this game isn't top-tier or anything, but to write it all off as just being pointlessly offensive isn't exactly correct either. It's edgy, it's shameless, it takes no prisoners; Clover does make fun of people, absolutely. But it does more than just yell slurs at minorities. It goes after everyone, including itself, the people who made it, the people who are playing it, with hyperbolic humour. Whether or not this humour is for you is another question, and if it's not? More power to you. The game does warn you upfront though that the game is going to be edgy/offensive, if Googling it alone somehow didn't give you an idea of what to expect. It's not like it's tricking you into playing an offensive game.

So far all I've really done is defend what I see being the most attacked parts of the game. And honestly I will die on these hills, the game is obviously offensive but it's not promoting an agenda. Whether or not some of the hundreds of anonymous contributors held any kind of beliefs is not for us to know, but a few rotten eggs in this case wouldn't (or shouldn't) taint the entire product. Because it's quite obvious to me that the intent isn't to spread actual hatred; if anyone played this game and had their own sick thoughts "justified" from that, then they would've already been looking for that approval from literally anywhere else. The fault lies on the individual, not the game openly mocking people who believe such things. I digress, though... the serious talk is all well and good. But this is a game, not a political debate. How does the game part of this game hold up?

...well it's Pokemon, big surprise. But with a whole roster of brand-new monsters it really does feel like stepping into a new official release, albeit with this thing most of the main games don't know; challenge. Pokemon Clover features a really great difficulty curve that although starting off as your standard Pokemon fare will gradually turn into making use of EV-trained teams with idealistic moves and items, whilst never once leaving you feeling like you're lagging behind. The game especially takes advantage of this by having its first half not require any serious EV-training of your own, whilst heavily encouraging it in the second half. At the same time however the game makes training-up a competitive grade team incredibly easy very early into this portion of the game, with it being theoretically doable even before then if you're determined enough to max-out a certain Pokemon earlier on. Better still, this game is built around trial-and-error with you expected to lose most major fights at least once before acquiring a victory. Unlike most other difficulty ROM hacks, too, these eventual victories feel satisfying. Playing around with all the new Pokemon to find what works for specific matchups is incredibly fun, with training them up taking no time at all too it's easy to just pop on some background noise as you grind-up a new team member before setting back off into battle and see how your new crew matches-up. Most of this, for me, came during the first half of the game and primarily around the last three gym leaders who ended up exposing some bad type coverage in my team building. Yet all I did was try out a couple new members (two of whom ended up staying for the rest of this part of the game) and found success not long after, rather than being actually roadblocked for what felt like ages because the AI would cheat or have items/Pokemon obviously better than my own. The game actually tests you with engaging team designs, encouraging you to mess around with the options presented before you and using your brain for tactical play. It'll gradually ease you into the tougher battles whilst still giving a nice sprinkle of challenge earlier on without making you feel like you're losing due to bullshit, the game keeps you pretty much on-par with your opponents as much as it can.

For me the best part of this game's difficulty was felt in the second half of it all, where despite things being generally tougher than the first half of the game? I managed to pretty consistently stick with just one team of six that I bred-up. I'd argue few of the Pokemon on said team could be considered exceptionally great, too, especially my water of choice (Substarr). Yet I still got through the game's harshest battles using the team I liked best, because the game wasn't throwing dick moves or unstoppable mountains at me. The game is engaging, satisfying, and rewarding: But most importantly, it's FUN. Pokemon Clover is one of the most fun monster-taming RPGs I've played and ranks up as perhaps the most fun Pokemon experience so far, really only challenged by the Gamecube titles and Emerald Rogue. This is not to dismiss the other mainline Pokemon entries, but as far as games which are instantly memorable for their challenges and how I loved overcoming them? Colo/XD, Emerald Rogue, and now Clover rank as the cream of the crop for me. Of these... I would say Clover is most likely my favourite, considering by the end of the game I had half a box full of backup team members from how many I loved using and swapping-around. This game put a ton of effort into making so many of the Pokemon interesting with not just their (sometimes questionable) designs, but their kits; the type combos, moves both custom and canon, and likewise for abilities. My first team consisted of about eight or nine members swapped in-and-out, with a number of others used for early-/mid-game progression before being replaced, and my second team being more or less a consistent new six Pokemon that I'd caught, bred, and trained-up. This, however, says nothing of the number of Pokemon I wish I could've used and still want to use in future runs of the game. There are so many interesting ones I considered using but eventually settled on a group I became properly attached to, it's a really great feeling and does end up being reminiscent of an official Pokemon experience in that regard. Just exploring this big new world full of unique monsters, finding which ones are your favourites. I can't say enough how fun this game is, because fuck me sideways it's absolutely top-tier stuff.

Graphically this game is absolutely incredible considering this is a fan-project and running on the GBA hardware. I have seen some of the past sprites and despite looking far more rough once upon a time, the version of the game I played had basically nonstop graphical euphoria. Seriously, this is one of the most authentic looking fangames that I've ever seen. The trainer sprites and Pokemon sprites both fit the GBA style to an absolute T with the artists making the absolute most of the GBA's limited sprite sizes whilst still making visually distinct sprites with plenty of life and detail. I of course think of the dabbing youngster sprite whilst typing this sentence out, but in all fairness it is perhaps the best dabbing youngster sprite I've seen. For real though this game is graphically amazing from the creatures, to the trainers, to the backgrounds, tilesets, move effects, dialogue portraits... not everything is 100% original of course but the majority of this stuff obviously is. It's wonderful to see how much care was given to what really could've been a crappily-drawn meme game and it adds so much charm to the experience that I simply cannot gush about it enough.

Story is where this game both did and didn't surprise me. Going in, I didn't really have any story expectations considering this is a 4Chan game. The main villains being a Reddit expy was comically expectant though and I do like how they manage to be stupid goofballs whilst also somehow managing actual impact on the game's events, showing a level of competence despite making Team Star look like actual villains. Coming to a head with a boss showdown that manages to build itself up as something bigger, then get resolved right after with the kind of humour expected at this point in the game. But what did surprise me? How they managed to make these reddit wannabes into something far, far more interesting and a legitimate threat by the second half of the game. Not only that but calling attention to how nonsensical their actions were and describing them as such; it's a great surprise that layers on actual intrigue, especially since until now this is an evil team whose highlights include trying to steal something open-source and housing two weak fodder grunts that randomly shout a gamer word before battle. The fact that the game could make this same villain team into an actual threatening force but an interesting villainous presence, with the elites of this group serving as some of the most challenging, interesting, and fun fights in the entire game. How these guys get their story concluded is really nice as well, having a real-stakes final fight that itself is another fun challenging yet fun battle with incredible music behind it all. Yet despite this, the game never truly loses it's roots as being a primarily funny experience. It has genuine moments for sure but the most of this game- including the post-defeat speech of the main antagonist -carries a humorous tone that is primarily consistent. It takes a little to fully get into gear, but when it gets going it feels like one big enjoyable ride. Whether or not you find it funny is another story; objectively, though, it keeps the tone up really well despite wanting to tell more of an actual story during the latter portions of the playtime.

The soundtrack... yes the soundtrack here was (as far as I know) primarily made by some of the guys behind SiIvaGunner so meme remixes are rampant, and for the GBA they fit really really well. They are remixed pretty much flawlessly for the console limitations, without bastardizing any of them (the first gym battle music- Darude Sandstorm -is a perfect example). All of this despite me not really caring for the SiIvaGunner project; I do genuinely enjoy and appreciate their contributions here though. Not only are the remixes great, but so SO many original tracks are earworm material with how well composed and catchy they are. Always suiting the situation they're used for, being great to hum along with if that's your thing too. Battle themes are especially notable for this, with the Shadow Council theme being one I've gone back to so frequently despite hearing it five times in one sitting. Something like that is how you know you've struck gold, having a player wanting to obsessively listen to your soundtrack after they've already been hearing it for ours on end. Full props to everyone who contributed their musical talents, because there are very few songs I didn't care for. So many songs got me hyped-up, a lot of sudden meme remixes got actual laughs out of me when they appeared, and my work playlist got a fuckton bigger because of this game. Give it a listen... or play the game to hear it all in context. Either works.

I already said it at the start of this lengthy behemoth of a review. But this game is overall fantastic, easily what I consider the best Pokemon fangame and currently my favourite one too. The big fuss with this game is surrounding the content within it, but after having it hyped up I really was left asking "Is that it?" because all-in-all it wasn't anything outstandingly offensive. Maybe my unfortunate real-world exposures have left my senses simply fucked, but I really can't think of anything that genuinely made me go "Damn that's gonna hurt someone". It's a Pokemon game with embarrassing humour and designs that range from awesome to Kuklan, this is the kind of thing where you just have to embrace it and realize- as said -it IS just a game at the end of the day. If you're getting legitimately angry or offended over a game that openly advertises itself as having lowbrow humour, then quite frankly I don't think you have the right priorities in life. Feel free to have your own opinion of course: You can dislike this game, I have no issues there. But disliking it and being hurt or offended by it are completely different things.

I love this game so, so much. Far more than I ever expected to; I went in thinking it'd be just an alright but fun game with some stanky humour, but got one of the best Pokemon experiences to date. It is so shameless that I can't help but laugh along with the funny moments, or cringe-up at the shameful/edgy moments. And I do feel like that was at least half of the intent on part of the team behind this monolithic project, considering the origins behind it and all. If you're a fan of Pokemon and can tolerate, ignore, or enjoy this kind of humour then I 100% recommend this game to you. This is an absolute gem of a game that deserves to be known as more than just "the offensive 4Chan game", because it has so clearly gone above and beyond that original premise to become something truly special. It is absolutely packed with content, and I completed it all. Pokemon Clover is such a special piece of work, such an amazing video game experience, that for the first time in years I was compelled to complete the Pokedex all the way. This game is a golden nugget, a crown jewel, an absolute diamond of fangames. And as my log dates show, I did sit on this review for a while because I had so much to say and so much to think on. Even retrospectively, this game really sticks out as something truly great in my mind.

Despite going the completionist route, I still didn't want to put this one down when I was finished with it. One more time now... I fucking loved this game. Will absolutely be replaying it again in future, for many years to come. Godspeed, Clover devs. Thanks for all your hard work.